Fred Kaplan: If jihadists control Iraq, blame Nouri al-Maliki, not the United States.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Never made sense that if Iran was our real nemesis, we would take out Hussein

(enemy of Iran) and install a Shiite (Maliki) and then expect him to not go all tribal and cause a Sunni backlash, and create large chain of Shia-aligned countries cooperating with each other (Iran, Syria, Iraq) that Saudi Arabia and Qatar hated--so SA retaliates with the funding/arming of Sunni extremists to try to upend the Shia rule (but of course they only support "moderates", on paper). None of it makes any fucking sense in terms of serving US interests.